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UK Holidays - London 1945: Life in the Debris of War
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List Price: $16.95
Our Price: $11.53
Your Save: $ 5.42 ( 32% )
Availability: Usually ships in 24 hours
Manufacturer: St. Martin's Griffin
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Average Customer Rating:  
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Binding: Paperback
Dewey Decimal Number: 940.53421
EAN: 9780312338046
ISBN: 031233804X
Label: St. Martin's Griffin
Manufacturer: St. Martin's Griffin
Number Of Items: 1
Number Of Pages: 528
Publication Date: 2006-06-13
Publisher: St. Martin's Griffin
Release Date: 2006-06-13
Studio: St. Martin's Griffin
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Editorial Reviews:
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When Hitler unleashed a fierce barrage of weapons on the defiant capital of England, London’s resilient citizens were undaunted. With colorful detail and rich insight, historian Maureen Waller takes readers through London in the last year of war. She reveals the magnificence of human spirit that carried a besieged people through agonizing travails and the long, giddy transformation the metropolis made as it passed through battle, to celebration, and back to life as usual.
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Spotlight customer reviews:
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Customer Rating:
Summary: How great that generation was!
Comment: This book shows grace, faith and courage under pressure. The people of the British Empire during WWII endured things that people should not have to endure then or now.
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Summary: Fascinating story of courage in war, wonderfully told by talented author
Comment: It must be serendipity when a very talented author chooses a fascinating subject and writes, in my opinion, the definitive book on the subject. That is what has happened here. Author Maureen Waller combines first-person accounts, statistics, and narrative to tell the story of Londoners during the last months of war in 1945, and the first difficult days of peace that year. I can't begin to tell you how many times I shook my head in the coffee shop, reading about the courage, fortitude, and determination of the people of London, as they endured shortages, bombs and rockets, loss of their homes, and death for yet another year. The Government grew massively, in response to the needs of the people, entering into every phase of their lives. Just the detailed information on rationing was mind-boggling. So was the effort to save and recycle everything (especially compared to these days). For example, bus passengers were encourage to recycle their ticket stubs so the paper could be recycled! The author relates a huge number of fascinating bits of trivia. For example, pants cuffs were banned because they used too much cloth. And the most popular fruitcake recipe at Harrod's (recipes were newly popular since the servants of the wealthy had mostly gone to factory or other wartime jobs) had as its main ingredient---tea!! (The Government bought up the ENTIRE tea output of several Asian nations). Women's heels could only be 2", jars of homemade jam could not be sold legally (although one could 'give away the odd jar'), queuing (standing in line) originated during WWII, coal was carried home in prams (baby carriages), the list goes on. I didn't think it was possible for me to read any book that made me more of an Anglophile, but Ms. Waller accomplished that! If you love the English people, reading about WWII, just reading great history, this book is for you. If you've been to London, this book is also for you, since it names many places familiar to the average tourist. In summary: WOW!
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Summary: The personal face of war
Comment: I read this book as a reference source for an historical fiction book I am writing, and found the information within it to be invaluable. The author must have spent hundreds and hundreds of hours doing research --- combing through photo archives, interviewing WWII survivors, visiting the Imperial War Museum, and who knows what else! The result is a book that is engaging, easy to understand, never dry or boring, and chock full of incredible information.
The author has managed to put a personal face on the effects of war on civilians -- from food and clothing rationing, to air raids and shelters, loss of homes and lives, and even the lengths to which women went to look good (shoe polish for mascara, cooking browning for painted on stockings, and lard for makeup remover.
The anecdotes, quotes, and photos really bring the time period to life! This is a wonderful book and it really shows the triumph of the human will, especially women's will, over adversity.
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Summary: wasthere
Comment: Where is Saskatoonguy getting this? About British rationing--rationing of food, clothing, gas/tires had started as a wartime measure in all the belligerent countries to enable an equitable distribution of resources. As for why it continued in Britain for so long after the war, one could ask Atlee to explain his austerity plan, but a simple answer is the British economy was in government-controlled disarray until the country started getting Marshall Plan money and the British government slowly began to realize that it was in its interest to allow the Europe it had so recently destroyed to rebuild itself--for trade. The privations of the citizenry were of little interest even to a Labour government. The British people did put up with a great deal, but there wasn't a lot one could do about it, and if it makes those who lived through it assign all blame to other governments and none to their own, so be it.
There wasn't much bombing in Britain after the 1940 Blitz until the short-lived pilotless V-1/V-2 rockets appeared in 1944, and in perspective, had very little effect, and counter-measures, such as simply shooting them down, were quickly effected. As I recall, most were aimed at Brussels.
As for sending food to Germany in 1945, I am curious about this blatant inaccuracy. The British government did many things post-war, such as illegally detaining POWs for at-home reconstruction and farm work for years, grabbing any and all German remaining coal supplies, industrial equipment, funds and property, and Churchill had initialed the gruesome U. S. Morgenthau Plan at Potsdam, but one thing Britain most certainly did not do was send food, and in short, hundreds of thousands more people died in the rubble of bombed-out Germany after the war.
People in Germany were getting by on 1000 or 900 calories a day, without housing, fuel or medicines as well, and in the British zone during the first winter after the war, it dropped to 400 per day - the amount allocated at the Belsen concentration camp had been 1400 calories.
Waller's book is a bit more than a paean to British pluckiness, and is an interesting read. The 'food for Germany' is untrue, but then newspapers print all sorts of propagandistic untruths; but if someone can cite any official source concerning British food aid to Germany in 1945, I'd appreciate an opportunity to examine it. And am looking forward to Waller writing something like Frankfurt 1945.
Customer Rating:
Summary: Simply Fascinating
Comment: Fascinating book. So often we read about soldiers' stories, idealized lustful romances flourishing in a war-torn city, or grandious accounts of military might. Not here.
This book tells you what the average citizen had to endure during WWII. Having been born in the 1970s, the concept of citizens sacrificing their material goods for their country and cooperating with and whole-heartedly believing in their government is a foreign concept to me. I cannot imagine rationing food, stealing to survive, having a 1-inch bar of soap to last for a month, or living in a subway tunnel, but the people of London did so for years. Reading this book has helped me put my priveledged, American life into perspective.
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